Advanced supplier selection: A hybrid multi-agent negotiation protocol supporting supply chain dyadic collaboration

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel form of supplier selection involving the supply chain dyad as the buyer and the suppliers as sellers. The main proposed contribution is a multi-attribute decision hybrid protocol for supplier selection based on collaboration and negotiation, adapted to dyadic collaboration in a supply chain context. Suppliers and the purchasing dyad can reach an agreement on the details of the products simultaneously and exploit the preferences of the customer dyadic partner to enlarge the criteria choices of the products. For this, the proposed protocol combines a one-to-one bilateral dyadic collaboration protocol inside the purchasing dyad along with a one-to-many multi-bilateral bargaining protocol between the purchasing dyad and suppliers. Illustrative multi-agent simulation experiments were carried out to prove the effectiveness of the proposed protocol. The protocol implementation shows better negotiation results than the classic supplier selection process, along with expected higher customer partner satisfaction and a more embedded dyadic relationship.